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Alan C. FoxAuthor. Entrepreneur. Game-changer.
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The Dream Is Free. The Hustle Is Sold Separately.

by Alan Fox 6 Comments

Dream-cloud-peopletools1As the man in front of me ordered his hamburger, I read the words on the back of his T-shirt.  “The Dream is Free.  The Hustle is Sold Separately.”

When I was a kid I had a dream of finding one product, placing an ad in a single magazine, selling more than $1,000,000 of my product, then retiring on my profit at age twenty.  The dream was free.  As it turns out, the hustle was missing.

In my teens I had the dream of being a better writer than Shakespeare.  Again, the dream was absolutely free. I also dreamed of becoming a concert pianist, winning the chess championship of the world, and of being elected president of the United States.  All were free. Then there was my dream of growing up, falling in love, getting married, and living happily ever after.

Dreams are hopeful, comforting, and the outline for a new reality.  All of us enjoy, or should enjoy, dreaming every day of our lives.  But we must realize that most of our dreams are born, and will live and languish, as fantasies.  A friend of mine once noted, “Dreams are extremely fragile outside the womb of the mind.”

One of my daughters dreamed of becoming an Olympic diver.  After her third lesson she announced, “I’m not going back.  The water is cold.”  As an adult she worked diligently for years to become a yoga teacher.

The restaurant chain Wendy’s televised a commercial years ago with the tag line, “Where’s the beef?”  Similarly, with respect to our dreams, we might ask ourselves, “Where’s the hustle?”

Which of your dreams have come true?  Which of your present dreams would you like to come true?  I have good news and bad news.  The good news is that many of your dreams can and will become real.  The bad news is that you will almost certainly have to personally add some hustle.

Those of my dreams which have come true each required effort over a period of many years.

Dream-hustle-peopletoolsIn my late twenties I began to invest in commercial real estate.  Success – the beginning of real success – was ten years away.   Twenty years ago I established the poetry journal Rattle.  Again, real success began after more than a decade of determination.  My wife and I founded The Frieda C. Fox Foundation in 1999.  Due to the efforts of our outstanding executive director, and dozens of family and non-family members, the foundation has become one of the leaders in youth philanthropy.  And our Junior Board, ages eight to seventeen, works persistently to help others, which is now not only our dream, but their dream as well.

I may be stating the obvious in telling you that it takes effort to get from here to there.  But it does.

And as for my dream of “living happily ever after,” which is part of my own fairytale that began, “Once upon a time,” I’m still working on it.  Few farmers plant seeds, walk away, and return to harvest an abundant crop.  Few relationships flourish without care, concern, and consistent attention.

The dreams are free.  And hustle is the not-so-secret sauce of making your dreams come true.

Alan

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The Concert Is Today

by Alan Fox 0 Comments

concert-today-peopletoolsI have a serious question.

Are you only as good as you need to be?

Before you answer, I offer the observation that, in my experience, none of us is as good all of the time as we can be part of the time. Try as we might, we can’t be at “our best” every hour of every day. And this is just fine.  Sometimes it is really important to be at your best, at other times it is not as important.

So the real question is, “How do you allocate your attention and energy so that you can be at your best—your peak performance—when it’s most important?”

For me, the most important daily task I engage in which I always want to be my best at is driving.  As I told each of my children when they were first learning to drive, if your attention wanders for half an hour in class your grade may suffer.  If your attention wanders for five seconds while you are driving a car, the consequences could be far worse.  In five seconds of inattention you could be dead, or confined to a wheel chair for the rest of your life.  I always aim to be as good at driving as I possibly can every time I drive.

Whenever I walk down a flight of stairs, I’m equally careful.  I pay strict attention to my balance and hold on to the railing (if there is one).  Physical safety is my number one issue, and in this area I always want to be as good as I can be.  An accidental fall, especially one that involves hitting your head on a hard surface, causes many premature deaths.

My father is a world-renowned teacher of brass instruments.  I have seen him, in just a few minutes, help hundreds of students dramatically improve their playing of any wind instrument.  A typical lesson with a new student often ends with my father’s standard advice, which he himself has lived by:

LIfe-dressRehearseal-PeopleTools“Even if you’re practicing on a desert island and there is no one within a thousand miles to hear you, you still must pay strict attention to what you’re doing.  You must approach each practice session as if it was the most important concert of your career.”

That makes perfect sense to me.  When you reinforce a bad habit in practice it will inevitably creep into your performance as well.

It is said that “life is not a dress rehearsal.”  Today is the real thing.  You only have one shot at today and, if you’re lucky, tomorrow.

Consider how much fun it can be to perform a task, even a simple one, to the best of your ability.  Please note that I am not talking about perfection.  Far from it.  I’m simply talking about doing any task, such as my writing this blog, in the best way I can today.  Hopefully, the habit of doing my best will help me to write even better for next week’s blog, and even better than that for my blog the week following.

Think about it.

Are you only as good as you need to be?  Or are you as good as you can be?  The concert is today.

Alan

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Five Secrets of Entertaining a Group

by Alan C. Fox 0 Comments

Entertainment-Peopletools-1I don’t think of myself as a professional entertainer.  Far from it.  I’m most comfortable talking with a friend at lunch or, at most, another couple when dining out. I’m outside my comfort zone if I’m expected to socialize with many people in one room.

I still remember a “surprise” party I threw for my girlfriend (later to become my wife) for her nineteenth birthday.  I planned the party for weeks, especially the entertainment which consisted of games with prizes.  I had cleverly structured the evening so that every one of the twelve or fourteen guests would win a valuable prize.  If that sounds to you like I was trying to “buy” friends, you are exactly right.  On the appointed night, even though I waited for an extra hour, two of the invited couples failed to arrive.  This put a crimp in my plans and a dent in my self-esteem.  The party was a success, but by the end of the evening I felt no exhilaration as I shut the front door on the heels of the final couple to leave. I only sensed relief and exhaustion.  There had been no major crisis, and that was about as good as I could have expected.

During the past fifty or more years I have hosted a number of parties for as many as three hundred guests.  I am more comfortable now, since there has never been a disaster. In fact, the vast majority of my guests seem to thoroughly enjoy themselves. I know this because I am often asked, “When’s the next party?” Even so, I still worry.

From my experience I offer five secrets on how to successfully entertain a group of many, even if you’re a natural introvert like I am.

  1. Enjoy yourself during the party. Your guests are watching you, and if you have a smile on your face and interact with many people, they will follow your lead.
  2. Invite a diverse group of people whom you like – no downers, please – and allow them to find each other. Other than for the head table, I never assign seating.  Guests are free to find old friends, connect with new friends, or, as I do at other peoples parties, locate a table off to the side with a single end seat for me so that my wife can be my human conversation shield.
  3. AlanWithCake-Launch Party-2Provide enough food and drink to satisfy everyone. I’ve been to a few parties where the food consisted of stale potato chips and the drink was one bottle of diet coke to be shared six ways.
  4. Get out of the way and let it roll. At the midpoint of my recent 75th birthday party, with 275 invited guests, my party planner Jeanne pushed her way through the crowd to whisper in my ear, “Alan, I’ve lost control of the party.”  And, indeed, she had.  Everyone sat down for dinner forty-five minutes late.  It was impossible to hear the piano player over the clamor of conversation.  And the magician cut his act, not his assistant, in half because everyone was having far too much fun talking and scarfing down cake and ice cream to pay attention to him.  The party was an outstanding success.
  5. On a vacation with many family members or friends, I plan one event a day (usually breakfast or dinner) which everyone is expected to attend. This provides a bit of structure and the opportunity to share experiences.  Otherwise, the vacation, like a party, is a free for all.  Some guests may enjoy bungee jumping, hiking, or horseback riding.  Others may turn to golf, shopping, or reading a book while relaxing near the swimming pool.  All of them will figure out what they would enjoy most, and I don’t have to organize anything, other than for myself.

Of course, if all else fails I might pass out some of those expensive party favors saved from that “surprise” nineteenth birthday party I worried about so many years ago.

Alan

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